Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was born on March 18, 1858, in Paris, France.  Diesel’s parents were German Born, but immigrated to France before their son’s birth. During the Franco- Prussian War, Rudolf Diesel was sent to live with his aunt and uncle to learn German and visit the Königliche Kreis-Gewerbsschule (Royal County Trade School).  Diesel’s uncle was a mathematics professor at the school.

Diesel decided he wanted to be an engineer at age 14, after graduating at the top of his class in 1873. He took a scholarship from the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich in 1875, against the will of his parents.  Diesel graduated with high honors from the school in 1880. He went back to his parents in Paris, and joined with former professor Carl von Linde on the design and construction of a modern refrigeration and ice plant. He soon took over the job as director of the plant.

Rudolf Diesel married Martha Flasche in 1883 and continued is work with Linde. During this time he received numerous patents in both France and Germany.  The couple had three children together and in 1890, the family moved to Berlin. In Berlin, Diesel took over management of Linde’s corporate research department.

He soon began to work with various engine designs and fuels. His research into fuel efficiency led him to work on and improve the steam engine, using ammonia vapor. His experiment exploded and almost caused Diesel’s death. Rudolf Diesel spent many months in the hospital recovering from the near fatal accident. He started working on an engine based on Carnot cycle. When Daimler and Benz created the motor car in 1887, Diesel published a treatise entitled “Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat-engine to Replace the Steam Engine and Combustion Engines Known Today.“

With the help of Springer Verlag Berlin, Diesel was able to build a working engine, which was the precursor to the diesel engine. Rudolf Diesel obtained patents for his design in Germany, America, and other countries.

On September 29, 1913, Rudolf diesel boarded a steamboat from Antwerp to London for a meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing Company. He ate dinner and retired to his cabin around 10:00 p.m. Diesel left word form someone to wake him at 6:15 a.m. He was never seen alive again. No one was in his room when a shipmate went to wake him in the morning. Ten days later, a Dutch boat came across a corpse in the water. They could not retrieve the body because of the decay; however they removed some of the personal belongings from the body, to identify the man. Diesel’s son Eugen Diesel identified the items as his fathers on October 13th.